This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation ...
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This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation and two conspicuous events which characterized the Marian character of Catholicism in the 19th century: the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and the rise of Marian apparitions and subsequent pilgrimage locations, most conspicuously at Lourdes in France.Less

The Virgin Mary

Lawrence S. Cunningham

Published in print: 2006-06-15

This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation and two conspicuous events which characterized the Marian character of Catholicism in the 19th century: the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and the rise of Marian apparitions and subsequent pilgrimage locations, most conspicuously at Lourdes in France.

Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster examines how women from different social backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation. The focus is on Münster, a city in the north of ...
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Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster examines how women from different social backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation. The focus is on Münster, a city in the north of Germany, which was exposed to powerful Protestant influences which culminated in the notorious Anabaptist kingdom of 1534. After the defeat of the radical Protestants, the city was returned to Catholicism and a stringent programme of reform was enforced. By examining concubinage, piety, marriage, deviance, and convent reform, core issues of the Counter-Reformation’s quest for renewal, this fascinating study shows how women participated in the social and religious changes of the time, and how their lives were shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Employing research into the political, religious, and social institutions, and using an impressive variety of sources, Simone Laqua-O’Donnell engages with the way women experienced the new religiosity, morality, and discipline that was introduced to the city of Münster during this turbulent time.Less

Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster

Simone Laqua-O'Donnell

Published in print: 2014-03-13

Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster examines how women from different social backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation. The focus is on Münster, a city in the north of Germany, which was exposed to powerful Protestant influences which culminated in the notorious Anabaptist kingdom of 1534. After the defeat of the radical Protestants, the city was returned to Catholicism and a stringent programme of reform was enforced. By examining concubinage, piety, marriage, deviance, and convent reform, core issues of the Counter-Reformation’s quest for renewal, this fascinating study shows how women participated in the social and religious changes of the time, and how their lives were shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Employing research into the political, religious, and social institutions, and using an impressive variety of sources, Simone Laqua-O’Donnell engages with the way women experienced the new religiosity, morality, and discipline that was introduced to the city of Münster during this turbulent time.

This chapter offers a social and demographic analysis of the large families who claimed pronatalist tax exemptions in Old Regime France between 1666 and 1760. Samples suggest that recipients were ...
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This chapter offers a social and demographic analysis of the large families who claimed pronatalist tax exemptions in Old Regime France between 1666 and 1760. Samples suggest that recipients were mostly members of urban middling groups including craftsmen and professionals. Demographically, their high fertility was the result of early, long‐lasting marriages and the employment of wetnurses. In social, economic and demographic terms, these families do not seem strikingly different from the French urban households who were beginning to adopt contraceptive practices during the same era. The chapter also reviews contemporary religious sources that not only forbade contraception, but that endowed marriage and prolific reproduction with positive spiritual value. It concludes with a brief study of the strategies some of the large families used to pass on assets and preserve harmony among their numerous progeny.Less

Inside the Famille Nombreuse

Leslie Tuttle

Published in print: 2010-05-27

This chapter offers a social and demographic analysis of the large families who claimed pronatalist tax exemptions in Old Regime France between 1666 and 1760. Samples suggest that recipients were mostly members of urban middling groups including craftsmen and professionals. Demographically, their high fertility was the result of early, long‐lasting marriages and the employment of wetnurses. In social, economic and demographic terms, these families do not seem strikingly different from the French urban households who were beginning to adopt contraceptive practices during the same era. The chapter also reviews contemporary religious sources that not only forbade contraception, but that endowed marriage and prolific reproduction with positive spiritual value. It concludes with a brief study of the strategies some of the large families used to pass on assets and preserve harmony among their numerous progeny.

The book adopts as its theme Pascal's assertion that “Christianity is strange” (“le christianisme est étrange”), taken from the Pensées, and explores various possible understandings of the statement ...
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The book adopts as its theme Pascal's assertion that “Christianity is strange” (“le christianisme est étrange”), taken from the Pensées, and explores various possible understandings of the statement in terms of Catholic particularity, as it was expressed in the writing of the French seventeenth century. This was a period of quite exceptional fertility in a range of genres: apologetics, sermons, devotional manuals, catechisms, martyr tragedies, lyric poetry, polemic, and spiritual autobiography. The chapters consider a broad cross‐section of this corpus with reference to the topics of apologetics, physicality, language, discernment, polemics, and salvation; and evidence is drawn both from canonical figures (Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, St François de Sales, Madame Guyon) and from less easily available texts. The writer's aim is to explore all those features that the heritage of the Catholic Reformation brought to the surface in France, and to do so in support of the numerous ways in which Christian doctrine could be understood as being strange: it is by turns contrary to expectations, paradoxical, divisive, carnal, and inexpressible. These features are exploited imaginatively in the more conventional literary forms, didactically in pulpit oratory, and empirically in the accounts of personal spiritual experience. In addition they are manifested polemically in debates surrounding penance, authority, inspiration, and eschatology, and often push orthodoxy to its limits and beyond in the course of their articulation. The work aims thereby to afford an unsettling account of a belief system to which early‐modern France often unquestioningly subscribed, and to show how the element of cultural assimilation of Catholic Christianity into much of Western Europe only tenuously contains a subversive and counter-intuitive creed. The degree to which that remains the case will be for the reader to decide.Less

Catholic Particularity in Seventeenth-Century French Writing : 'Christianity is Strange'

Richard Parish

Published in print: 2011-07-28

The book adopts as its theme Pascal's assertion that “Christianity is strange” (“le christianisme est étrange”), taken from the Pensées, and explores various possible understandings of the statement in terms of Catholic particularity, as it was expressed in the writing of the French seventeenth century. This was a period of quite exceptional fertility in a range of genres: apologetics, sermons, devotional manuals, catechisms, martyr tragedies, lyric poetry, polemic, and spiritual autobiography. The chapters consider a broad cross‐section of this corpus with reference to the topics of apologetics, physicality, language, discernment, polemics, and salvation; and evidence is drawn both from canonical figures (Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, St François de Sales, Madame Guyon) and from less easily available texts. The writer's aim is to explore all those features that the heritage of the Catholic Reformation brought to the surface in France, and to do so in support of the numerous ways in which Christian doctrine could be understood as being strange: it is by turns contrary to expectations, paradoxical, divisive, carnal, and inexpressible. These features are exploited imaginatively in the more conventional literary forms, didactically in pulpit oratory, and empirically in the accounts of personal spiritual experience. In addition they are manifested polemically in debates surrounding penance, authority, inspiration, and eschatology, and often push orthodoxy to its limits and beyond in the course of their articulation. The work aims thereby to afford an unsettling account of a belief system to which early‐modern France often unquestioningly subscribed, and to show how the element of cultural assimilation of Catholic Christianity into much of Western Europe only tenuously contains a subversive and counter-intuitive creed. The degree to which that remains the case will be for the reader to decide.

This book provides a synthesis devoted to the French experience of religious change during the period after the wars of religion up to the early Enlightenment. It provides an up-to-date and thorough ...
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This book provides a synthesis devoted to the French experience of religious change during the period after the wars of religion up to the early Enlightenment. It provides an up-to-date and thorough account of the religious history of France in the context of social, institutional, and cultural developments during the so-called long seventeenth century. The book argues that the French version of the Catholic Reformation showed a dynamism unrivaled elsewhere in Europe. The traumatic experiences of the wars of religion, the continuing search within France for heresy, and the challenge of Augustinian thought successively energized its attempts at religious change. The book highlights the continuing interaction of church and society and shows that while the French experience was clearly allied to its European context, its path was a distinctive one.Less

Church, Society, and Religious Change in France, 1580-1730

Joseph Bergin

Published in print: 2009-08-25

This book provides a synthesis devoted to the French experience of religious change during the period after the wars of religion up to the early Enlightenment. It provides an up-to-date and thorough account of the religious history of France in the context of social, institutional, and cultural developments during the so-called long seventeenth century. The book argues that the French version of the Catholic Reformation showed a dynamism unrivaled elsewhere in Europe. The traumatic experiences of the wars of religion, the continuing search within France for heresy, and the challenge of Augustinian thought successively energized its attempts at religious change. The book highlights the continuing interaction of church and society and shows that while the French experience was clearly allied to its European context, its path was a distinctive one.

The conclusion uses the history of a Carmarthenshire holy well to restate the themes of the main chapters of the book. It re-emphasizes the way in which the Protestant and Catholic Reformations ...
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The conclusion uses the history of a Carmarthenshire holy well to restate the themes of the main chapters of the book. It re-emphasizes the way in which the Protestant and Catholic Reformations converged with other intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural developments to transform both the physical appearance of the early modern landscape and the beliefs and practices that clustered around it. It underlines the complex and contradictory effects of the religious changes of the period and argues that they served to re-define rather than undermine the presence of the sacred in the material world. It also highlights the way in which these developments reconstituted social memory and played a key part in the forging of confessional identities.Less

Conclusion

Alexandra Walsham

Published in print: 2011-02-01

The conclusion uses the history of a Carmarthenshire holy well to restate the themes of the main chapters of the book. It re-emphasizes the way in which the Protestant and Catholic Reformations converged with other intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural developments to transform both the physical appearance of the early modern landscape and the beliefs and practices that clustered around it. It underlines the complex and contradictory effects of the religious changes of the period and argues that they served to re-define rather than undermine the presence of the sacred in the material world. It also highlights the way in which these developments reconstituted social memory and played a key part in the forging of confessional identities.

This overview chapter for the third part of the book covers the theologies of salvation in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. It covers both the theology of the Reformers, in which ...
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This overview chapter for the third part of the book covers the theologies of salvation in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. It covers both the theology of the Reformers, in which God’s declaration of righteousness is based solely upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and the ensuing Catholic “Counter-Reformation,” in which salvation had happened, is happening, and is yet to come.Less

Theologies of Salvation in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation : An Introduction

Published in print: 2017-10-31

This overview chapter for the third part of the book covers the theologies of salvation in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. It covers both the theology of the Reformers, in which God’s declaration of righteousness is based solely upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and the ensuing Catholic “Counter-Reformation,” in which salvation had happened, is happening, and is yet to come.

The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences—such as tonal music—began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the ...
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The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences—such as tonal music—began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the displacement of aristocratic music-makers by a new professional class of performers. This book looks at a related phenomenon: the rise of a cultivated audience whose skill involved listening rather than playing or singing. Drawing from contemporaneous discourses and other commentaries on music, the visual arts, and Church doctrine, this book links the new ideas about cultivated listening with other intellectual trends of the period: humanistic learning, contemplative listening (or watching) as an active spiritual practice, and musical mysticism as an ideal promoted by the Church as part of the Catholic Reformation.Less

Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy

Andrew Dell'Antonio

Published in print: 2011-07-21

The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences—such as tonal music—began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the displacement of aristocratic music-makers by a new professional class of performers. This book looks at a related phenomenon: the rise of a cultivated audience whose skill involved listening rather than playing or singing. Drawing from contemporaneous discourses and other commentaries on music, the visual arts, and Church doctrine, this book links the new ideas about cultivated listening with other intellectual trends of the period: humanistic learning, contemplative listening (or watching) as an active spiritual practice, and musical mysticism as an ideal promoted by the Church as part of the Catholic Reformation.

María de San José Salazar (1548–1603) took the veil as a Discalced (“barefoot”) Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa of Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform and serving ...
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María de San José Salazar (1548–1603) took the veil as a Discalced (“barefoot”) Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa of Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform and serving as prioress of the Seville and Lisbon convents. Within the parameters of the strict Catholic Reformation in Spain, she fiercely defended women's rights to define their own spiritual experience and to teach, inspire, and lead other women in reforming their church. María wrote this book as a defense of the Discalced practice of setting aside two hours each day for conversation, music, and the staging of religious plays. Casting the book in the form of a dialogue, she demonstrates through fictional conversations among a group of nuns during their hours of recreation how women could serve as very effective spiritual teachers for each other. The book includes one of the first biographical portraits of Teresa and María's personal account of the troubled founding of the Discalced convent at Seville, as well as María's tribulations as an Inquisitional suspect. Rich in allusions to women's affective relationships in the early modern convent, it also serves as an example of how a woman might write when relatively free of clerical censorship and expectations.Less

Book for the Hour of Recreation

Maria de San Jose Salazar

Published in print: 2002-10-01

María de San José Salazar (1548–1603) took the veil as a Discalced (“barefoot”) Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa of Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform and serving as prioress of the Seville and Lisbon convents. Within the parameters of the strict Catholic Reformation in Spain, she fiercely defended women's rights to define their own spiritual experience and to teach, inspire, and lead other women in reforming their church. María wrote this book as a defense of the Discalced practice of setting aside two hours each day for conversation, music, and the staging of religious plays. Casting the book in the form of a dialogue, she demonstrates through fictional conversations among a group of nuns during their hours of recreation how women could serve as very effective spiritual teachers for each other. The book includes one of the first biographical portraits of Teresa and María's personal account of the troubled founding of the Discalced convent at Seville, as well as María's tribulations as an Inquisitional suspect. Rich in allusions to women's affective relationships in the early modern convent, it also serves as an example of how a woman might write when relatively free of clerical censorship and expectations.

For information on the life and work of Vincent de Paul, historians still depend mainly on the standard biography produced by the Vincentian Pierre Coste, the triple volume Le Grand Saint du grand ...
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For information on the life and work of Vincent de Paul, historians still depend mainly on the standard biography produced by the Vincentian Pierre Coste, the triple volume Le Grand Saint du grand siècle, even though it is close to a century since this was published. It is now widely recognized that while the disruption of the Wars of Religion (1562–98) meant that the drive for Catholic reform began later in France than elsewhere, once it was set in motion it reached levels of intensity and creativity over the first six decades of the seventeenth century which were unmatched in any other region. The Introduction locates de Paul within the historiography of the Catholic Reformation and French religious renewal, by offering a survey of the findings of the most significant research in these areas, and identifying the questions that these evoke for the assessment of de Paul’s activities.Less

Introduction

Alison Forrestal

Published in print: 2017-05-11

For information on the life and work of Vincent de Paul, historians still depend mainly on the standard biography produced by the Vincentian Pierre Coste, the triple volume Le Grand Saint du grand siècle, even though it is close to a century since this was published. It is now widely recognized that while the disruption of the Wars of Religion (1562–98) meant that the drive for Catholic reform began later in France than elsewhere, once it was set in motion it reached levels of intensity and creativity over the first six decades of the seventeenth century which were unmatched in any other region. The Introduction locates de Paul within the historiography of the Catholic Reformation and French religious renewal, by offering a survey of the findings of the most significant research in these areas, and identifying the questions that these evoke for the assessment of de Paul’s activities.

The most cherished values of modernity are unthinkable without the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Equal rights, the growth of democracy, and the idea of perpetual progress stem from thinkers who ...
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The most cherished values of modernity are unthinkable without the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Equal rights, the growth of democracy, and the idea of perpetual progress stem from thinkers who lived 250 years ago but whose ideas are as attractive as ever. This book argues that while Catholic beliefs are commonly assumed to be at odds with modernity, most of the progressive reforms associated with the Enlightenment actually began to take shape during the Catholic Counter-Reformation two centuries earlier, and were staunchly defended by enlightened Catholics during the eighteenth century. This is the forgotten story of a progressive Catholicism that actively engaged with the world. Although this mode of thought declined in the nineteenth century, it reemerged powerfully at, and after, Vatican II (1962–1965).Less

The Catholic Enlightenment : The Forgotten History of a Global Movement

Ulrich L. Lehner

Published in print: 2016-03-01

The most cherished values of modernity are unthinkable without the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Equal rights, the growth of democracy, and the idea of perpetual progress stem from thinkers who lived 250 years ago but whose ideas are as attractive as ever. This book argues that while Catholic beliefs are commonly assumed to be at odds with modernity, most of the progressive reforms associated with the Enlightenment actually began to take shape during the Catholic Counter-Reformation two centuries earlier, and were staunchly defended by enlightened Catholics during the eighteenth century. This is the forgotten story of a progressive Catholicism that actively engaged with the world. Although this mode of thought declined in the nineteenth century, it reemerged powerfully at, and after, Vatican II (1962–1965).

Leaders of the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation understood the role of visual art as entirely bound to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the sacred and placed the ultimate onus of that ...
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Leaders of the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation understood the role of visual art as entirely bound to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the sacred and placed the ultimate onus of that understanding on the properly disposed recipient. They also set about positing musical experience and most crucially the listener's appropriate parsing of that experience, as a privileged path to union with the divine. A focused approach to musical realization developed primarily in elite roman circles, in the first decades of the seventeenth century. One of the central contentions of this study is that the nonspecificity of musical description in seventeenth-century accounts can be read as a purposeful strategy on the part of some writers to establish a non-technical musical-descriptive frame. The chapter illustrates this elite discourse on listening as a “spiritual practice” because the individuals whose writings are examined describe the phenomenon of listening as an active, carefully applied process that is designed to establish a privileged connection with the divine.Less

Introduction : Listening as Spiritual Practice

Andrew Dell'Antonio

Published in print: 2011-07-21

Leaders of the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation understood the role of visual art as entirely bound to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the sacred and placed the ultimate onus of that understanding on the properly disposed recipient. They also set about positing musical experience and most crucially the listener's appropriate parsing of that experience, as a privileged path to union with the divine. A focused approach to musical realization developed primarily in elite roman circles, in the first decades of the seventeenth century. One of the central contentions of this study is that the nonspecificity of musical description in seventeenth-century accounts can be read as a purposeful strategy on the part of some writers to establish a non-technical musical-descriptive frame. The chapter illustrates this elite discourse on listening as a “spiritual practice” because the individuals whose writings are examined describe the phenomenon of listening as an active, carefully applied process that is designed to establish a privileged connection with the divine.

This book offers a major reassessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional ...
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This book offers a major reassessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional explanations for de Paul’s prominence in the dévot reform movement that emerged in the wake of the Wars of Religion, it explores how he turned a personal vocation to evangelize the rural poor of France into a congregation of secular missionaries, known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Lazarists, with three interrelated strands of pastoral responsibility: the delivery of missions, the formation and training of clergy, and the promotion of confraternal charity. It demonstrates that the structure, ethos, and works that de Paul devised for the Congregation placed it at the heart of a significant enterprise of reform that involved a broad set of associates in efforts to transform the character of devotional belief and practice within the church. The book’s central questions concern de Paul’s efforts to create, characterize, and articulate a distinctive and influential vision for missionary life and work, both for himself and for the Lazarist Congregation, and it argues that his prominence and achievements depended on his remarkable ability to exploit the potential for association and collaboration within the dévot environment of seventeenth-century France in enterprising and systematic ways. It is the first study to assess de Paul’s activities against the backdrop of religious reform and Bourbon rule, and to reconstruct the combination of ideas, practices, resources, and relationships that determined his ability to pursue his ambitions.Less

Vincent de Paul, the Lazarist Mission, and French Catholic Reform

Alison Forrestal

Published in print: 2017-05-11

This book offers a major reassessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional explanations for de Paul’s prominence in the dévot reform movement that emerged in the wake of the Wars of Religion, it explores how he turned a personal vocation to evangelize the rural poor of France into a congregation of secular missionaries, known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Lazarists, with three interrelated strands of pastoral responsibility: the delivery of missions, the formation and training of clergy, and the promotion of confraternal charity. It demonstrates that the structure, ethos, and works that de Paul devised for the Congregation placed it at the heart of a significant enterprise of reform that involved a broad set of associates in efforts to transform the character of devotional belief and practice within the church. The book’s central questions concern de Paul’s efforts to create, characterize, and articulate a distinctive and influential vision for missionary life and work, both for himself and for the Lazarist Congregation, and it argues that his prominence and achievements depended on his remarkable ability to exploit the potential for association and collaboration within the dévot environment of seventeenth-century France in enterprising and systematic ways. It is the first study to assess de Paul’s activities against the backdrop of religious reform and Bourbon rule, and to reconstruct the combination of ideas, practices, resources, and relationships that determined his ability to pursue his ambitions.

This chapter focuses on the life of María de San José Salazar, her origins, writing, and her Book for the Hour of Recreation, which voices the concerns of a woman who was content to work within the ...
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This chapter focuses on the life of María de San José Salazar, her origins, writing, and her Book for the Hour of Recreation, which voices the concerns of a woman who was content to work within the parameters of what she understood to be the non-negotiable limitations on women's roles during the Catholic Reformation. Her poetry demonstrates that she had mastered a wide variety of metrical forms, from the Italianate sonnet to the folkloric Castilian villancico. The absence of genealogical records for her family suggests that María was an illegitimate child of a highly placed member of Doña Luisa's household. In 1562, Doña Luisa asked the Carmelite provincial of Castile to allow Teresa de Jesús, a nun from Avila with a growing renown for saintliness, to stay with her in Toledo. María relates that she and her companions were fascinated by the nun and more than once spied on her through cracks in the door as she prayed in ecstasy.Less

Introduction to María de San José Salazar (1548–1603)

Published in print: 2002-10-01

This chapter focuses on the life of María de San José Salazar, her origins, writing, and her Book for the Hour of Recreation, which voices the concerns of a woman who was content to work within the parameters of what she understood to be the non-negotiable limitations on women's roles during the Catholic Reformation. Her poetry demonstrates that she had mastered a wide variety of metrical forms, from the Italianate sonnet to the folkloric Castilian villancico. The absence of genealogical records for her family suggests that María was an illegitimate child of a highly placed member of Doña Luisa's household. In 1562, Doña Luisa asked the Carmelite provincial of Castile to allow Teresa de Jesús, a nun from Avila with a growing renown for saintliness, to stay with her in Toledo. María relates that she and her companions were fascinated by the nun and more than once spied on her through cracks in the door as she prayed in ecstasy.

This chapter describes the presence of the religious orders within France referred to as “the white mantle of the churches.” The place where many of the greatest religious orders were founded and ...
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This chapter describes the presence of the religious orders within France referred to as “the white mantle of the churches.” The place where many of the greatest religious orders were founded and developed, France's landscape was heavily dotted with old and new, male and female religious orders. With the Catholic Reformation, the latest and perhaps the most intensive round of foundations began, adding new “religions”—as religious orders were commonly described since the Middle Ages—to the existing ones, which by way of response often found themselves regrouping, reforming, and sometimes expanding in new formations. If the sheer scale of the presence of the regulars in France, in both town and country, is difficult to convey as a whole, it is largely because of the considerable plasticity of the successive forms that this presence possessed, which can lead historians of the ancien regime church to underestimate them.Less

The Monastic Orders : Adjustment and Survival

Joseph Bergin

Published in print: 2009-08-25

This chapter describes the presence of the religious orders within France referred to as “the white mantle of the churches.” The place where many of the greatest religious orders were founded and developed, France's landscape was heavily dotted with old and new, male and female religious orders. With the Catholic Reformation, the latest and perhaps the most intensive round of foundations began, adding new “religions”—as religious orders were commonly described since the Middle Ages—to the existing ones, which by way of response often found themselves regrouping, reforming, and sometimes expanding in new formations. If the sheer scale of the presence of the regulars in France, in both town and country, is difficult to convey as a whole, it is largely because of the considerable plasticity of the successive forms that this presence possessed, which can lead historians of the ancien regime church to underestimate them.

The people of Oberwesel-Bacharach sought the canonization of the Good Werner of Oberwesel in 1417. Whatever their reason for doing so, the testimonies they left behind were used by the Bollandists to ...
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The people of Oberwesel-Bacharach sought the canonization of the Good Werner of Oberwesel in 1417. Whatever their reason for doing so, the testimonies they left behind were used by the Bollandists to highlight some of the Catholic Reformation's most important doctrinal cruxes, as well as its negative opinions and anxieties about Jews living in the midst of Catholicism. The one major charge against Jews that is not raised by the Werner tale is that of usury, something that the story of Richard of Pontoise is able to do. Lending's most vocal critics, fifteenth-century Observantine Franciscans, called the Jews “truly wild and thirsty dogs, who [through their lending activity] have sucked and go on sucking our blood.” In his ritual murder story entitled Passion of Richard of Pontoise, written in 1498, Robert Gaguin claims that Richard's martyrdom persuaded King Philip Augustus to liberate France from the Jews and, in particular, from the oppressive claws of Jewish lending.Less

Richard of Pontoise and Philip Augustus

Published in print: 2006-03-22

The people of Oberwesel-Bacharach sought the canonization of the Good Werner of Oberwesel in 1417. Whatever their reason for doing so, the testimonies they left behind were used by the Bollandists to highlight some of the Catholic Reformation's most important doctrinal cruxes, as well as its negative opinions and anxieties about Jews living in the midst of Catholicism. The one major charge against Jews that is not raised by the Werner tale is that of usury, something that the story of Richard of Pontoise is able to do. Lending's most vocal critics, fifteenth-century Observantine Franciscans, called the Jews “truly wild and thirsty dogs, who [through their lending activity] have sucked and go on sucking our blood.” In his ritual murder story entitled Passion of Richard of Pontoise, written in 1498, Robert Gaguin claims that Richard's martyrdom persuaded King Philip Augustus to liberate France from the Jews and, in particular, from the oppressive claws of Jewish lending.

This chapter discusses the significant connection between Spanish Rome and papal Rome by showing that the end of the former marked the end of one of the latter's greatest eras. The end of Spanish ...
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This chapter discusses the significant connection between Spanish Rome and papal Rome by showing that the end of the former marked the end of one of the latter's greatest eras. The end of Spanish Rome led to Rome's long slide into an increasingly marginal position in Europe. The political strategies and practices of Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V, and Philip II had survived until the end, giving Rome 150 years of relative peace and prosperity—something the city had not known since antiquity. The death of the last Habsburg monarch in the person of Charles II in 1700 was the end of an era in Rome. No succeeding monarch would be as generous to the city and as supportive of the exalted claims of the Catholic Reformation papacy.Less

Spanish Revival and Resilience, 1650–1700

Thomas James Dandelet

Published in print: 2001-12-11

This chapter discusses the significant connection between Spanish Rome and papal Rome by showing that the end of the former marked the end of one of the latter's greatest eras. The end of Spanish Rome led to Rome's long slide into an increasingly marginal position in Europe. The political strategies and practices of Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V, and Philip II had survived until the end, giving Rome 150 years of relative peace and prosperity—something the city had not known since antiquity. The death of the last Habsburg monarch in the person of Charles II in 1700 was the end of an era in Rome. No succeeding monarch would be as generous to the city and as supportive of the exalted claims of the Catholic Reformation papacy.

This book undertakes a close analysis of de Paul’s wide-ranging activities during the principal decades of Catholic reform in France, offering unprecedented insights into the ways in which de Paul ...
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This book undertakes a close analysis of de Paul’s wide-ranging activities during the principal decades of Catholic reform in France, offering unprecedented insights into the ways in which de Paul engaged with it, and influenced its direction. The conclusion confirms that de Paul stands out amongst a host of distinguished peers in the dévot environment, because he succeeded in articulating and applying traditional teachings and existing practices in new, enterprising, and systematic ways. It also concludes that he exploited the potential for association and collaboration that lay amongst a cross-section of his contemporaries to realize his goals to carve out a particularly distinctive and popular manifestation of religious activism. The Lazarist Congregation was endowed with multifaceted features of pastoral care, and stood at the heart of an enterprise geared towards the reform of contemporary religious practices.Less

Conclusion

Alison Forrestal

Published in print: 2017-05-11

This book undertakes a close analysis of de Paul’s wide-ranging activities during the principal decades of Catholic reform in France, offering unprecedented insights into the ways in which de Paul engaged with it, and influenced its direction. The conclusion confirms that de Paul stands out amongst a host of distinguished peers in the dévot environment, because he succeeded in articulating and applying traditional teachings and existing practices in new, enterprising, and systematic ways. It also concludes that he exploited the potential for association and collaboration that lay amongst a cross-section of his contemporaries to realize his goals to carve out a particularly distinctive and popular manifestation of religious activism. The Lazarist Congregation was endowed with multifaceted features of pastoral care, and stood at the heart of an enterprise geared towards the reform of contemporary religious practices.